Aston Villa v Chelsea Post-Match Thread

[Legion]

Available Saturday evening.

[TheSandman]

Hard won point. Some bad passing and some bad misses from Ireland and Coker.

[hackneyvillain]

Defo would have taken that at the start of the day.
Could easily have gone either way.

[brontebilly]

some bad misses alright but to be fair we were shocking with the ball today. Thought Warnock up to the 80th min had a fine game but he totally ran out of steam then. Surprised to see Clark ahead of Cuellar. Hard to know what Cuellar has done wrong since Wolves. Ireland was hopeless, Carew equally as bad. Think we caught Chelsea at a good time. Defensively we looked a lot better today in fairness but an awful lot to improve upon. Downing's ability to pull out of anything close to physical contact continues to annoy.

[Somniloquism]

Although the last player we wanted on the 1 on 1 was Reo, not many of our players would have had the energy to be in that position after playing the full 90 mins.

For the rest of it, we didn't do badly playing 10 v 12. Carew needs to be dropped. I'm guessing Houllier does not like Cuellers play in some way. We need to do better with set pieces even if that means Young is taken off the duty.

Is Warnock now suspended from the next match on bookings or is he one away?

[Yossarian]

Yep, I'll take that.

[The Situation]

Meh, a draw is probably a fair result, we had the better of the first-half and Chelsea had the better of the second-half. Missed chances are a bit annoying when we came so close to scoring a few times as Chelsea didn't really threaten us too much with Friedel not having too much to do, but like I said a few days ago, I wouldn't be disappointed with 1 point against the champions; we matched them on the field without 4 players who are in great form and we defended great again. I'm really proud of our performance today.

Lots of effort and passion shown today by all our players which is another positive to take away from this evening's match.

P.S. The ESPN commentators are dicks. Both clearly wanted Chelsea to win. I'd rather have Jim Rome commentating than those pair clowns.

[citizenDJ]

I thought we did quite well there, really. Ireland was disappointing; I can take him being mostly crap providing he produces 'that one moment of magic that can turn a match'. He didn't, sadly.
John Carew was also pretty poor, but then I don't expect much else from him anymore.

A bit strange about Cuellar, although I have to say I think Clark is very good indeed, very promising.

And despite his miss, NRC played really well throughout. His energy is remarkable, and he's certainly tenacious, and his passing isn't too bad when he keeps it simple. As Somniloquism says, he may have missed the chance, but he did well creating it!

Downing was also very good, and his improvement and consistency will serve us well.

So all in all, a sound performance and, in my opinion, another promising development in our style of play.

[Rigadon]

Downing's best game in a Villa shirt for me.  Very impressed.  Good defensively, should have scored a few but that's par for the course.  Would've taken a point and that's what we deserved.

[eastie]

Downing man of match in my opinion, a good point against a quality team and very impressed by our lads performance, Carew was the weak point but midfield and defence fought like tigers and I'm very happy with how things are going under GED!

[darren woolley]

I will take the point thought carew had a poor game and Ireland should have scored NRC full of energy but also should of scored very sound defensively.

[garyfouroaks]

Just back. Dreadful game.Petrov was hopeless, Downing was good.

[Dave]

Decent team performance.

Downing stood out, nobody did badly at all. Ireland is a very in-and-out player, but when he's in, he always seems to do something useful.

[Karl Bridges]

I thought Ireland was constantly popping up in space and we never passed the ball to him. He hasn't played much football for a while so he needs a bit of time to get up to speed.

You can say what you want about Clark being chosen over Cuellar but it was very much the right choice, the kid is very calm under pressure. He made a couple of bad passes when he first came on and then calmed down and used the ball very well. I think he will be a big loss for England.

[avfc_1874]

Draw was a fair result. We really need to bring in a new striker though.